PORT TOWNSEND — The Olympic Music Festival begins its 2022 Summer Season in Port Townsend today.
The festival’s 39th summer season offers in-person performances at Fort Worden’s Wheeler Theater, Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. from today through Sept. 11.
Genre-smashing GardenMusic will also perform in a special celebration weekend, Aug. 27-28 at the Palindrome on South Jacob Miller Road.
Tickets are on sale at www.olympicmusic festival.org. All seats are $40, except for tickets to GardenMusic, which are $60; youth ages 12 and under are free when accompanied by an adult. Student and group rates also are available.
The chamber music series begins with two Olympic Chamber Music Fellowship weeks and four fellowship performances.
This weekend, fellows and mentoring professionals perform Mozart’s operatic Piano Quartet in E-flat major and Brahms’s nostalgic Clarinet Quintet, featuring Avery Fisher award–winning clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein.
The next weekend’s concerts, Aug. 20-21, will highlight works by Beethoven, Bloch, Brahms, Haydn and Mendelssohn.
“Attracting fellows from top music conservatories who are on the threshold of their professional careers, this sought-after program underscores OMF’s commitment to education, with four concerts each year,” according to a press release.
The season will continue with a celebration week marked by the return of GardenMusic, led by pianist and clarinetist Teddy Abrams, now music director of the Louisville Orchestra.
GardenMusic breaks boundaries with its mélange of classical works along with jazz, bluegrass, folk, and a little bit of everything else, organizers said.
Abrams will be joined by Tessa Lark, Grammy-nominated violinist; Harrison Hollingsworth, violinist-composer and principal bassoonist of the New York Ballet; Nathan Farrington, vocalist and principal bassist of the L. A. Opera Orchestra; and Gabriel Globus-Hoenich, percussionist and educator.
GardenMusic will present two gala concerts, and two young-people’s performances, Aug. 25–28.
The festival will conclude its season Sept. 10-11 with Piano Extravaganza. Pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown and Artistic Director Julio Elizalde performing works for solo and duo piano, including Mendelssohn’s Andante and Allegro Brillant and Ravel’s Rhapsody Espagnole.
For more information, see www.olympic musicfestival.org.
Audrey Chen 2022 Fellow Cellist
Alexander Fiterstein 2022 Mentor Clarinetist
Yoojin Jang 2022 Mentor Violinist (Photograph by Bonsook,Koo)
